General Motors is cutting production at most of its 10 manufacturing plants in Europe in a stark sign of the growing toll the credit crisis is taking on demand in the real economy. GM said on Tuesday it was halting production or cutting shifts at the plants for between 10 days and three weeks in response to lower sales of its Opel, Vauxhall and Saab cars.

Biofuels are doing more harm than good, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation said yesterday, in its strongest call yet to review "current policies supporting, subsidising and mandating biofuel production and use".

Three European scientists shared the first of this year's Nobel awards, the medicine prize, for identifying the viruses responsible for Aids and cervical cancer.

An Indonesian plantation company has filed the first patent applications for a hybrid variety of palm oil seeds and their production that it expects will increase the crop's yield by several hundred per cent.

It is time the UK government took a fresh look at its housing ambitions and admitted what the industry has been saying for more than a year: that they are simply not achievable.

These were policies designed for a boom, not possibly the worst housing slump since the second world war, and there should be no embarrassment in admitting as much.

The green agenda is at risk of being sidelined by the credit crisis, in spite of attempts to keep issues alive in the commercial property industry. The environmental impact of commercial property is undeniable, with about half of all Britain's carbon emissions associated with buildings, according to government figures.

Ryanair shareholders attending the company's general meeting in Dublin in September were bemused by a sight not often associated with such gatherings, when a bare-chested young man wearing an oxygen mask approached the podium where Michael O'Leary, the chief executive, was speaking.

Europe's governments must work together to deliver a "visible and stable" European energy policy or they will fail to attract the investment they need to meet sharply rising demand, according to Pierre Gadonneix, president of the World Energy Council and chairman of French energy group EDF.

Construction of a $1.4bn, 700-mile pipeline to carry natural gas from Peru's Camisea fields to its impoverished south will begin in 2010, according to Kuntur Transportadora de Gas, which will sign a contract with the country's government today.

The slowing economy and financial crisis are testing Europe's goal of becoming a world leader in greenhouse gas reduction.

Industry has seized on the slowdown to lobby for delayed or watered down regulations, arguing that directives set out by the European Commission earlier this year would force them to cut jobs or relocate factories abroad.